Venison Prosciutto

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Wet Spaniel

Smoke Blower
Original poster
Dec 10, 2017
102
113
Yorkshire Dales, U.K.
I've been wanting to try this for a while now. Here in the UK we have 6 species of deer and the only ones on the land I hunt are red deer which are the biggest. For my fist attempt I didn't want to use such a large leg for fear of wasting it and also I'd like some relatively quick results. I was lucky enough to get hold of a roe deer which is a much smaller beast so I thought it would be perfect for me to have a little experiment with. Once it comes out of the cure i'm going to paint the outside (apart from the 'cut end') with beeswax to slow down the drying process. I've read that you can use lard, but I have a buddy who keeps bees so it seems like the logical way to go.
Venison 1.jpg
Venison 2.jpg
 
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I am concerned with the bone in on venison. I’m afraid with a dry cure it may spoil. Bone in venison cuts are a no no for long term. It always needs to be de-boned
 
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Interesting....my concern is the flavor in the fat. Venison fat can be extremely strong. Let us know how that turns out.

Also, hope you cleaned the ball socket out very well and packed it full of salt!
Oh- and the shank too!!!
 
Interesting....my concern is the flavor in the fat. Venison fat can be extremely strong. Let us know how that turns out.

Also, hope you cleaned the ball socket out very well and packed it full of salt!
Oh- and the shank too!!!
Thanks, what fat are you referring to? I’m not sure if you could see the pictures of the meat, but there’s absolutely no fat on this deer whatsoever.

I’ve not packed any specific areas with salt…. my approach was to use the equilibrium method so I’ve applied the cure across the meat pretty much equally - my understanding of osmosis is that irrespective of where I place the salt, it would end up evenly distributed. That said, this is my first at a venison leg so I’m very receptive to any tried and tested advice 👍
 
Bone sour is a real concern for a bone in ham. Just equally distributing the salt over the ham will not prevent bone sour. You need to get that salt into the bone ASAP to prevent it.

I am an avid hunter. We process all our deer. Even if you removed all the visible fat from the outside of the leg, there should be pockets of fat within the leg between the muscle groups. Every deer we break down has this. Even late season bucks run down from the rut...and I have found that the less fat on a deer, the stronger the remaining fat will be.
 
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Bone sour is a real concern for a bone in ham. Just equally distributing the salt over the ham will not prevent bone sour. You need to get that salt into the bone ASAP to prevent it.

I am an avid hunter. We process all our deer. Even if you removed all the visible fat from the outside of the leg, there should be pockets of fat within the leg between the muscle groups. Every deer we break down has this. Even late season bucks run down from the rut...and I have found that the less fat on a deer, the stronger the remaining fat will be.
Thanks for that. I agree with you on the deer fat, nasty taste and nasty mouthfeel too. However, I broke down the other haunch of this deer into the muscle roasts for the freezer and there's absolutely no fat on it. We do tend to sometimes find it on find it on backs of deer but for upland deer grazing on scrub moorland, they don't exactly get too chubby in this neck of the woods. on the bone sour front, when I started curing whole pigs legs i read as many arguments for leaving the bone in as I did for tunnel boning it out. So for my first, I left the bone in, that one worked OK so I've always left them in since then with the salt rubbed evenly across the exposed meat of the ham. I've never done a deer leg before but I'm using this as an experiment and basing it on the process I'm familiar with, and have had success with.

That said, I intentionally waited until I had a small leg to experiment with, if it does go tits up - I'll be the first to admit it failed.
 
I pulled the leg from the cure today. A friend of mine who keeps bees gave me some lovely fresh beeswax, which I’ve painted onto the sides of the leg to slow down the drying process.
 

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